


Head Over Heels

by karrenia_rune



Category: Lewis Carroll - Alice In Wonderland
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:NYR 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 05:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1375846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feels like falling for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Over Heels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alice/gifts).



Disclaimer: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as are the characters who appear here or are mentioned are the original creations of Lewis Carroll, they are not mine. Written for Alice's request in the NYR 2009 Yuletide Challenge.

In her heart of hearts she never truly would allow herself to let go of the quaint dream of Wonderland despite contrary evidence and her own deeply ingrained common sense.

Such things were the stuff of dreams and any reasonable person would do well to set aside such things and get on the day-to-day business of life. That was the sensible thing to do; that is exactly what she should do and with the determination mixed with a sense of wonder and curiosity that had seen her through her first and perhaps the last visit to the curious world below ground while Alice Liddell had set about being sensible. 

She had sensibly paid attention to the lessons of her governess; Sensibly gone about her chores and even shirked from time to time, well, she sniffed, one could not be sensible all of the time. 

Later, she had gone off to finishing school for young ladies of the day along with her portmanteau of fine Egyptian linen cloth and lacy handkerchiefs and gloves, some sewn by her own hand, others by her older sister. 

She had stayed on at the boarding school and only come home to visit her family during holidays. In the back of her mind she had truly believed that any lingering residues of memories of the world below ground and it is perhaps even more so its strange but marvelous inhabitants had been left behind as well. For assuredly, her sister and parents and the friends she had made at school would prefer it that way. 

Then when then did she occasionally toss and torn in her sleep, her subconscious insisting in a subtle voice that it might still be possible that it had all been real, so long ago?

She was not a child anymore, but a young lady of quality and from a family if not among the very rich, at least well off. 

Tossing aside the covers of the bedspread she got out of bed and slipped her bare feet into a pair of slippers lined up on the floor of her old bedroom and quietly padded out of the room and into the hallway, gasping a little as her old cat, Dinah, no longer as white as she had been, jumped into her arms. "Dinah, you old rascal, and where have you been hiding all this time. I expect you'll want a can of tuna from the kitchen."

Dinah purred and stared up at Alice with the placid expression of harmless affection in wide blue eyes, still purring contentedly. *** Dinah, licking down her whiskers with one forepaw extended out of the front of her seemed content and with a look at Alice over her shoulder she padded over to the front door that leads out to the yard, stopped halfway and looked back once more. Alice sighed and figured if she could not sleep she might as well walk in the yard as not. "Come on, then," she whispered to Dinah unable to refrain from a conspiratorial wink just as they used to exchange, "for old time's sake, you old rascal."

** The moon was still up but its face was obscured by a brace of clouds scudding across the sky, by its faint illumination Alice padded across the expanse of the grassy lawn wondering how soon it would before Mr. MacLaine and his crew of groundskeepers would be out in force to tend to the weeding and rosebushes and the like. 

She shook her head and continued to walk, choosing a direction out from the house at random. Dinah had turned around and circled around her a few times, weaving in and out of her legs and once nearly tripped her up. "Be careful, there, old dear, neither one of us is as young as we used to be."

Dinah sniffed and scampered off once more. 

"Cats!" Alice muttered under her breath, smile and a bit miffed at all the same time.

At the edge of the lawn Alice came to the old aspen tree and the river by the bank that marked the western edge of the property. She sighed and arranging the folds of her robe around her shoulders slid down to sit with her back against the stout tree trunk. She closed her eyes, telling herself that it would only be for a moment, the briefest of moments, but the sleep that had eluded her earlier, at last, claimed her and she knew nothing more. ***

When she awoke again she realized with a start that her surroundings had changed. The lawn, the house across the way, the stream bed all had vanished as if they had never existed. Logic, common sense and the evidence of her own eyes, ears, and hands told her that this could not be happening; that it was all a dream. 

She realized in a back corner of her mind that she ought to be frightened, but another part of her mind was clamoring to be heard over the sensible, logical part, telling her, that perhaps now would be an excellent time to let logic take a flying leap.

She smiled, "Ah, if only Alicia could see me now. She had a fit!"

Leaning up against a trunk of an overhanging willow tree that had seen better days was a man dressed in a black suit with tails and a top hat with the faint but still quite legible letterings stitched with white thread. 34/36 ½, and it took only a moment to recognized that Mad Hatter.

"hullo, my dear. It has been a long time. I do hope," he said doffing his bedraggled top hat and with it dangling from his right hand bowed to her. "that you have not forgotten an old if a bit shabby old friend."

Alice stood up and brushed the worst of the brush and dirt from her robe. 

"Welcome back to Wonderland," said the Mad Hatter. 

"I never, I thought,..." her thoughts and feelings becoming hopelessly tangled up one with another as she trailed off before she said: "Forgive me, it is just that I never believed it would be possible to come back, for a return visit as it were."

"It shouldn't," replied the Mad Hatter, but I did some research at considerable expense to myself, and at last I managed to discover a loophole."

"A loophole," said Alice skeptically, "I know what the term means, and it sounds like something that a barrister would use in a case in court."

"Yes, yes," replied the Mad Hatter distractedly, "I always assumed that this land of ours worked on the principle that everyone knew the unspoken rules and followed accordingly."

"Rules? 

"Magical rules, or the law of averages. Why did you think I was always carrying on that endless tea party, the one that never ended, because I liked tea so much or the company of the March Hare and the Door Mouse so much?"

Alice grinned. "Honestly, that was one mystery I never did solve."

"Like the raven and the writing desk," he said with a return grin of his own.

"The same," she said.

"Well, it seems that I am talking about the central point as it were." The Mad Hatter took a couple of steps toward her with his hat in his hand head nearly drooping so that it rested on the clavicle of his narrow chest. "Alice, I had best get this out while I still can. I am hopelessly in love with you."

"Oh!" Alice exclaimed, for the moment unable to form any more of a coherent response than that. "Oh, but I..."

"You don't have to say anything," replied the Mad Hatter. "I realize that when you were here last as a child I seemed quite ridiculous to you, perhaps nothing more than a figment of your imagination, but that very absurd imagination of yours, that indomitable certainly, not to mention, a little girl who knew her own mind, and no the right and wrong of things was what I loved most about you."

"I... I understand, at last, I think I do, in part, and I think you are very kind in saying all those things about me." Alice blushed. "I don't know what else to say." Love is so very complicated, not at all as simple and straightforward as the poets make it out to be."

"My stomach is tied up in knots," the Mad Hatter sat and replaced the now crumpled and much mishandled top hat back onto his hand. "Bah, I say to the poets, what have they ever known of love except to write about it in glowing and eloquent terms. Do you like poetry, Alice? 

"Well enough," Alice replied with a shy smile, wondering if this entire conversation seemed as natural as meeting an old friend along the lane leading to the brook and then on to the road towards Devonshire back home. 

"Well, I could write you a poem." The Mad Hatter stuck up a pose, balancing his weight on the heel of his left foot and began to recite: `Roses are red, violets are blue, and Alice's eyes are as blue and rosemary and rue. I.. am love with you."

Alice smiled. "Quite charming." Before she could think better of her impromptu action or of the conquesences of that action Alice stepped forward and holding onto to his slight shoulders embraced the Mad Hatter and kissed him. His first reaction had been to pull away, but finally he leaned into the kiss and they stood together alone like that for a very long time.

 


End file.
